I'm enjoying the low-stakes nature of this show so far.
(Which is good since the effects when she does use her powers to fight aren't great and they clearly know it since they try to obscure it with camera angles)
Been watching the US Open. Serena's (probably) last match was incredible. On the one hand her failing to serve out the first set and then blowing a double break lead in the 2nd forcing her to win it in a tiebreaker basically meant she lost a winnable match but her last stand in the final game was amazing. Had me believing that if she managed to escape it that somehow she might manage to win the match even though she'd still be down even though the reality is she was probably completely out of gas by then.
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May you find your book in this place. Formerly known as xp1337.
I liked it. There was a lot of exposition, which is understandable because you're setting up an entirely different age of Middle-Earth (and there's a lot of exposition in Tolkien stuff in general anyway), but I imagine it'll start picking up in the next episode with the way this one ended.
and boy is there a difference between this show's budget and She-Hulk's budget
Man, the party is a bunch of jerks just leaving Nia there lol. Not a huge fan of the Joran redemption but that's more because I feel like he was poorly utilized. It feels like we needed another major encounter or two between the last time (the Annihilator, right?) and this. And on a personal level I just feel the answer that it really *was* their Joran and he was just power tripping kinda boring and lame.
Also, the party wondering how Moebius followed them to the Cloudkeep is kinda funny given they inexplicably stopped wearing their eyepatches. Like Moebius could have straight-up just tracked them that way without the reasoning of having the ability to track M's body. I actually noticed that the eyepatch wearing seemed to arbitrarily stop after... I think after the whole Chapter 5 end stuff. ...Which didn't make much sense to me. That's still kind a concern. Then it appeared to come back in at least part of Upper Aetia, I dunno what's going on there honestly lol.
Might as well get some of my other gripes out of the way here - not a big fan of past dead characters being reborn like this at Omega. If it was *just* Miyabi and there was a specific reason for it relating to her being a talented off-seer I'd be good. But then it turned out everyone's back basically and Y apparently just needed someone to play music and that was pretty lame. I know that, Miyabi excepted, they aren't the same people and that's acknowledged repeatedly but still it feels cheap. Also not a fan of Ethel aging herself back up to her old age because it comes off as discarding the actually interesting dynamic of exploring the consequences of someone being reborn while people they knew are still alive (Moebius seemed to at least control for this to prevent it from happening so it's a new phenomena) just so we can justify having hero Ethel back in the party. We sorta get that exploration in Taion's Side Story with Nimue but eh.
Anyway, Nia explained a good chunk of the situation here. I'm thinking that the word isn't 100% frozen but like 99.9999% and the annihilation events are basically the super slo-mo version of the destruction that both worlds were trying to avert. But I suppose it's not super important. Just me trying to adjust to Nia saying that Origin's reboot process never began because I was nodding along to her explanation like "okay so Z hijacked it and made a world way different than intend-" before she poured cold water on that.
Segiri and Colony 0 were an interesting story/bunch. Makes sense that such a unit would exist and F was pretty interesting until like right before he died when he decided he had to be like even more unhinged than was necessary.
And a shoutout to Noah for calling Riku out on the bullshit I've been doing since Chapter 2 lol. And don't think I missed the fact that Riku talks about Lucky Seven in basically the same exact way Nia did! Nopon ages are weird but an older theory I had was he is the mystery seventh Founder of the City but I think we're supposed to beleive he's way too young for that. Not ruling out his mystery masterpon though.
Anyway, I progressed a little bit in Chapter 7 before going on my trip around the world for quests and dialogue. I considered doing so immediately because skip travel was up but since they all seemed like small steps I just did them. Currently I am supposed to be going back to Nia because she has one of the pieces of metal we need for our upgraded boat. Colony 30 was also nearly vacant of its NPCs so I'm guessing they have one too and that's why they're all gone atm. But I'm still going about doing quests so it may be a bit before I figure that out.
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May you find your book in this place. Formerly known as xp1337.
Xenoblade 3 Spoiler (no further than where Thorn is for real this time) Joren didn't come seem them when they were in jail for like a month, right? Although, Shania already took up the role of showing up to mock the heroes when they couldn't do anything and I feel like that what's Joren would have also been doing. So maybe Monolith didn't want to double up on that.
I feel like the eyepatch stuff was handled weirdly. Like the party really should be wearing them pretty much all the time since it is a life or death matter but they don't. I want to say they only really wear them in Cadensia and technically the party is in Aetia now but I guess you said you saw them wearing them in Upper Aetia so who knows?
The Colony Omega stuff was largely felt like an excuse to bring characters back from the dead for gameplay reasons. Like Ethel was still gaining exp while dead so something had to give there eventually. Before it happened, I sort of expected it might have been a post game thing where she's just playable without story justification.
Segiri and Colony 0 are great.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his. Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!
Personally, I don't think any of the characters who become Moebius are really handled that great. I mean, sure, they have their reasons, but those reasons don't generally justify becoming extremely evil. Just think about all the people M killed over the last 1000 years! And she's portrayed as a good guy!
And yeah, Ethel's return is basically a game mechanic. There's practically no story stuff there. Would've been more fun to add Young Ethel to the party, especially since they were saying she was defeating trained veterans already, but that would've been extra work, so I get it.
XB3: Oh you saw the eyepatch bit before I edited it out of the post...!
To be precise I don't think I ever *saw* them with them on in Upper Aetia but I heard the "don't forget the eyepatch" chatter when I entered the area or soon after so I assumed they did. I removed it from the post because it occurred to me that technically the Cloudkeep is in the black fog and so while I wasn't keeping track of it it's plausible they could have worn it until they entered the fog and only then took them off and it would fit. Now whether that's what actually happened, I have no clue, but it's why I took it out since I realized there was a possible explanation.
And I feel it's more a Chapter thing. I'm nearly positive they wore them everywhere outside the City in Chapter 5. I feel like I distinctly recall seeing it in Ouroboros order cut-ins while I was in like Fornis and stuff. But in Chapter 6 it feels like they just got tired of it or something lol.
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May you find your book in this place. Formerly known as xp1337.
And I feel it's more a Chapter thing. I'm nearly positive they wore them everywhere outside the City in Chapter 5. I feel like I distinctly recall seeing it in Ouroboros order cut-ins while I was in like Fornis and stuff. But in Chapter 6 it feels like they just got tired of it or something lol.
Nah, they take them off if you go far away enough from the city. They definitely don't have them in Fornis.
(but there's another NPC - Garrett - who I'm convinced has been hiding probably because some story/quest thing needs him; he showed up in like all the City quests)
Not all NPCS show up at all times of day; I think to make sure you find them all you need to check at around 7am, 2pm, and 7pm (in Ch. 6 Garret didn't spawn until my 7pm sweeps iirc, in the NE corner of the city)
End of Ch. 6: Yeah, Joren sucks and I wanted the team to just tell him that he was, in fact, a sadistic loser after his actions as J.
And ughhhh for some reason I kept hitting something to accidentally refresh the page like three times while writing this post, so it's shorter than it would have been.
XB3: I've gotten a bit lazier about changing the time for NPCs as time has gone on but I do know that and tried all times of the day for Garrett when I made that post. In any event, he showed up eventually and basically at my usual 10 AMish round of the City and was a frequent show from then on so I think he really was tied up for some bizarre reason even though I don't think anything story or quest related involved him after that post!
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May you find your book in this place. Formerly known as xp1337.
Welp I did my Ch. 7 sweep of Colony 9 and I still don't have the Fox/Camilla affinity link that I've be told is supposed to exist. I guess it could be from dialogue updates at rank 5 affinity, but I'm rapidly losing hope that I didn't mess up my affinity chart there early in the game.
Because it was a name I thought was cool back when I was 13 and I have thought it was extremely lame and embarrassing for like 15 years now so when they announced they were clearing out old, unused usernames I took the plunge.
LordoftheMorons posted...
Welp I did my Ch. 7 sweep of Colony 9 and
Without having the game on, I think you're okay here. Will probably get it later in your sweep. Specifically, if you want to know: Should be a quest in Iota that will lead to it becoming obtainable - it opens some collectopedia requests that also establish affinity links.
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May you find your book in this place. Formerly known as xp1337.
Without having the game on, I think you're okay here. Will probably get it later in your sweep. Specifically, if you want to know: Should be a quest in Iota that will lead to it becoming obtainable - it opens some collectopedia requests that also establish affinity links.
Ah that's a relief! I've been worried about that one specifically for almost the entire game because it really seemed like it should exist, and there was an earlier quest involving Fox that I know affected some links (I made what the quest guide I was following said was the "right" choice, but I never checked the other one), and I was also definitely less thorough about my clearing out all starred dialogue early on.
For Xenoblade 3, keep in mind that the game has memory leak issues that haven't been fixed yet. You should be closing the game frequently to make sure NPCs appear.
Turned out that seemed to be the case for Colony 30 being nearly empty from my last post. Which is super weird because I always close the game app when I'm done playing and I don't recall any other places having a problem despite that one being early in the session. I had convinced myself it was intentional because the NPCs that did show were all ones from other colonies so I thought it was intended that the Colony 30 natives be missing but I checked them again because of that notice and there they were. No quests though and only like one updated dialogue though.
Xenoblade 3: Normally wouldn't have an update here but like the second half of the quest roundup might as well have been "Ghondor's No Good Horrible Very Bad Day" lmao. Seriously. I basically do my quest/NPC check-ins in the order they were encountered in the story so it basically concluded with... Ghondor coming out on a quest with us to watch her friend die, causing the complete deterioration of the relationship between Agnus Castle and the City. Then she watched Jumbo Tirkin die in front of her and basically became a surrogate mom for two kid Tirkins. And then to cap off her day, Shania came back as a Moebius and attacked the City and died in front of her again, this time with her being the one who killed her. Like... damn. Talk about a day.
That behind us, I advanced the plot a bit and completed Noah's Side Story. Stopped immediately after that though. In retrospect, Crys being a Consul made a ton of sense given how he was the one who clearly shaped Noah's mindset which was already a fairly large outlier. I'm not toally clear on hsi deal though. I kind of got the impression from the cutscene direction that he became Moebius shortly after the "1,000 years earlier" flashback where M showed up, probably because he caught onto the other Consul slipping and revealing that death by Homecoming removed them from the cycle and he decided to pull on that thread by becoming Moebius. Consequently, I assume he just faked his death when his term was "supposed" to be up while teaching Noah to maintain cover but I'd have to double check cutscenes to see if he had a mark. I feel like he *did* but also that seems trivial for a Moebius to fake? ...Heck, Irma might have done so too but I wasn't watching for that at the time.
If he didn't and we take his "[I became Moebius] to see [Noah] again." at face value and he's relatively new that just makes very little to no sense to me. Sure he was Noah's senpai but like... that would be a super weak reason to come back unless all his hinting that Z has more reasons on his end explains that. Which it could, I suppose. Z seems to be talking to the dead in his theater lately so it's not totally impossible Crys legit died and then Z pulled him back recently (Crys seeing the party's exploits in the theater maybe?) I suppose.
Speaking of rewatching cutscenes, I feel like I confused myself on Flame Clocks recently and might need to rewatch stuff on that too. I've just been assuming that all pod-grown were attached to one at birth but I think Monica in her City tour mentioned the ones the City steals are now outside of the system so that shouldn't be the case. And also Colony transfers are a thing so obviously Consuls can reassign which Flame Clock someone is tied to so I guess it may follow that they have to do an initial assignment that may take place when they're taken out of their pods? Y is tied up in all this since his power *is* Flame Clocks and we're obviously not done with him so this may be revisited later.
Anyway, what brought this on was an extension of N's reveal that Homecoming soldiers aren't reborn. In hindsight it's super weird that Moebius would allow this at all because life is a limited resource for them. Even if they only let a handful of people reach it they'll eventually just run out of people and they use them as a fuel source so like... it very obviously would lead to the entire system collapsing when they just run out of people. Could simply be a way to remove troublesome people who continually cause problems most of their lives but still. Then again, Noah in the literal intro cutscene to the game notes the world is dying so this would track quite literally before even getting into Nia's explanation of the worlds or the fact the annihilation effect also kinda is slowly eating away at the world in general and would also eventually lead to a collapse itself.
also lol at Nia just deciding to roll with the idea that she's planning everything rather than admit she's just winging shit
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May you find your book in this place. Formerly known as xp1337.
I wasn't a fan of any of the Crys stuff. Boring guy.
For the Flame Clocks, the City steals them while they're still in the pods, before they're assigned to a Colony. I don't think they'd have the Clock before the Colony assignment.
I assumed that very few people make it to Homecoming, like maybe a couple a year at best. It doesn't make much sense to me that people who make it to Homecoming aren't reborn to me. Kinda feels like they added that detail just to make M's death more permanent...
XB3: Yeah, he's pretty boring. I think he's *slightly* more interesting if he became Moebius after catching that slip in the flashback and has just been going about being an off-seer to try and understand people's feelings towards death but even then.
Yeah, you're probably right re: Flame Clocks. I think I just got some wires crossed somewhere while trying to fit various worldbuilding pieces together.
Oh, yeah, it's definitely a rare event for sure as far as I can tell, but Moebius's whole apparent thing is an endless loop/"eternal now" and so any built-in attrition of a critical limited resource is insane. Even if they started with, say, a billion people and only let like 5 people a year reach Homecoming. That's *not* eternity. Which I suppose may well be the point. Moebius is simply slowing killing the world by defying the natural order in pursuit of a lie for their own gratification... but like, even then you'd figure they would try to prevent it if they could. Like that Consul in the flashback wasn't *wrong* from the Moebius point of view! Though in a way it seemed like he maybe knew M was lying through her teeth when she said Z ordered it but Z is just weird in general I feel like he flips between just allowing things to happen even if they're detrimental to Moebius even as lately he seems to slowly be having enough of this. I think he raised his voice out of his usual monotone for the first time after we beat C!
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May you find your book in this place. Formerly known as xp1337.
Xenoblade 3 spoilers up to where Thorn is Side Story: "Sena". At least she got a lot of time in Segiri's Hero Quest.
I don't think Homecoming normally takes the person out of the respawn cycle. I think the problem occurs when a person hits 10 or dies in some other way and has their Homecoming at the same time. That's how I interpreted N's comments.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his. Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!
I think the problem occurs when a person hits 10 or dies in some other way and has their Homecoming at the same time. That's how I interpreted N's comments.
That doesn't make any sense, since M was more than 10 and was ended by the Homecoming.
XB3: I think that's a special case because M had swapped bodies with Mio and *Mio's body* hit the end of term and expired and took M's consciousness/individuality with it. I might have brought on some of the confusion here by using Homecoming as a catch-all for "end of term" death/death by mark expiration. I think TRE is right that you get removed from the cycle if you die in a manner where your life is not absorbed by an enemy soldier (or monster, who seem to innately do this and work within the Flame Clock system?) and even then it seems they have to do so with a Blade - we've had multiple references to soldiers killing in a Levnis not being enough to absorb the life of slain enemies. That one guy jailed in Agnus Castle's sidequest, for instance.
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May you find your book in this place. Formerly known as xp1337.
That doesn't make any sense, since M was more than 10 and was ended by the Homecoming.
Xenoblade 3 spoilers. The body M was in at the time had hit the 10 year mark. As such, she was going to die that day. So when combined with the Homecoming, she also doesn't respawn.
Xenoblade 3 spoilers for AFTER where Thorn is Also, surely Ashera has made Homecoming a few times since the modern system was introduced. She apparently made it a bunch of times during the classic system where the person was just killed at the end and this was apparently a very long time ago.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his. Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!
Xenoblade 3 spoilers for AFTER where Thorn is Also, surely Ashera has made Homecoming a few times since the modern system was introduced. She apparently made it a bunch of times during the classic system where the person was just killed at the end and this was apparently a very long time ago.
My impression was that she always died bloodily, never making it to Homecoming. She couldn't stand to live that long because the pain was so bad.
I generally enjoyed everything about this episode (The Elrond/Durin stuff in particular was quite good) except for the Galadriel stuff, which felt like it didn't make much sense.
just casually playing the GOAT and not telling us =(
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Xenoblade 3: All Ascension Quests beated and my side quest adventure is over for now so I went and advanced the main plot. But upon doing so seemed like a good place to stop for the time being so all I did on the plot front was enter Origin.
On the quest front both Ashera and Segiri had great quests. For Ashera I was honestly expecting the Consul to reveal herself to be a past Ashera what with the headaches she started getting near her and the Consul seeming to drive in the fact that she knew *everything* about Ashera. Though in retrospect the letter wouldn't line up. Come to think of it don't think we've seen a Consul A yet. Segiri finding Thirteen was cool and the whole resolution of the Colony 0 plot was cute.
The Keves Castle/Fort O'Virben (or whatever) quests were all cool too. Felt like it did a better than average job of tying them all together culminating in the attack on Agnus. There definitely feels like there's more to this though because I highly doubt it ends with the colony relationship at antagonistic.
Next time: Origin.
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May you find your book in this place. Formerly known as xp1337.
Xenoblade 3: Made it to the apparent point of no return.
Not too much to say here Origin is a pretty boring place though. I don't mind linear areas in Xenoblade but, for example, I feel Mechonis was way more visually interesting. If nothing else I wish there had been more party chatter while going through here but oh well. Holy shit though were X and Y's appearances and deaths anti-climactic lmao. I as expecting them to provide some more exposition or something but nah we just murk them both. Y in particular like... sure, I'm not expecting the game to acknowledge I had Miyabi in my party to further the connection here, but even Mio and Sena were like "yeah let's kill him" "k." X glitched out and didn't disappear and just stayed glowing blue motes and I thought it was intentional or something until Y disappeared and then I warped back up and X was gone too.
Edit: oh my god i totally forgot we also fought N again and freed Melia which might say something about how impactful that all was to me lol. As I mentioned back in Chapter 5's end/6's beginning not a fan of this N redemption like no guys you had it right at the start when you were calling him the fuck out for massacring the City 1.0 which included his own descendants. And Melia said some stuff and can apparently break people free of the Flame Clocks which doesn't make sense to me but we killed Y so I feel like that probably did it anyway so maybe, like Nia, she was just BSing to us. Also Z is a personification of fear and uncertainty.
Anyway, next time we'll... check on all the world's NPCs for any last second dialogue/quests LOL. I dunno, maybe there'll be time to beat the game after but idk.
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May you find your book in this place. Formerly known as xp1337.
Xenoblade 3 spoilers up to where Thorn is I pretty much had the same reaction to Origin. It's a pretty lousy dungeon and there's not much going on. X and Y were a complete waste which is a shame since I kinda liked X. Miyabi saying something, even if it was minor, would have been cool. I'm not sure how many extra scenes there are in the game for bringing a certain Hero along. I know of a few but I probably missed quite a few from not having the right Hero around. Although there are time where it feel like I have the right Hero but they don't say anything anyways. The part with X and Y not disappear is a glitch. I thought it was fixed in the new patch but I guess not. One thing I still have no idea about is what happens to Side Quest Eunie if you kill X first. Like Eunie's side quest is optional so I think it can be put off until after this point in the game.
Melia can do stuff because she's Melia and that's reason enough. >_>
I didn't dislike the N plotline as much as you seem to. But, my Noah actually going down the path of N and murdering everyone still feels like a stretch to me. It's hard to see him actually doing that.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his. Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!
XB3: I only dislike the N plotline to the extent it keeps trying to redeem him. His backstory and fall are A+ and I'm fine with Noah's sympathizing with him/feeling had they switched places he may have done the same. But like... redemption arc? Not here for that lol.
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May you find your book in this place. Formerly known as xp1337.
Anyway, next time we'll... check on all the world's NPCs for any last second dialogue/quests LOL. I dunno, maybe there'll be time to beat the game after but idk.
Personally I'd beat the game first, since that unlocks a bunch of new dialogue and quests, but that's up to you. I don't know if you noticed, but dialogue isn't missable in this game. If you do something that gives a character new dialogue before getting their old dialogue, all of the dialogues you haven't seen yet will still be there. It's an awesome mechanic, and I wish every RPG did it. Imagine having that in Trails.
And yeah the final dungeon is not an interesting place! They could've at least made it half as long if they weren't going to make it exciting. At least it's not as bad as Arise's or something... I think the game underutilizes party chatter in general. Particularly notable whenever you're walking around following/escorting someone very slow, haha.
TeamRocketElite posted...
One thing I still have no idea about is what happens to Side Quest Eunie if you kill X first. Like Eunie's side quest is optional so I think it can be put off until after this point in the game.
I looked into this. X doesn't appear in Origin until you do Eunie's side quest.
I looked into this. X doesn't appear in Origin until you do Eunie's side quest.
Xenoblade 3 spoilers So if you don't do Eunie's side quest, the room is just empty and the party can just go through it and beat the game. Then if they do Eunie's side quest later, X shows up in the room if the player revisits it for some reason. Do I have that right? That's really clunky if it works like that.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his. Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!
Xenoblade 3 spoilers I guess it is one way of dealing with it if they wanted to keep Eunie's side quest as being optional. To be honest, I had spent a large part of the game assuming X couldn't die in the main story because it would mess up that optional side quest. The shock from the fact that we do off her might have meant something if she wasn't just treated as a nothing boss inside Origin. If Eunie's side quest was better, I might have preferred just making it mandatory instead because it sort of did introduce X who would play a role later on even if her end wasn't great.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his. Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!